Cover Story 
 

Cover Story

American Islamophobia

An exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims is perpetuated in America by negative stereotypes, resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life.

By Steven Ekovich | June 2021

Anti-Muslim attitudes are as old as the United States. This is not to say that Americans have been fixated all this time against Muslims. The threatening “other”, outside of what has come to be known as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural mainstream, has been a moving target in American history. In fact, until recently the longest standing religious hostility has been toward Catholics. It took until 1960 for Americans to accept a Catholic president, John Kennedy.

Although Jews have been part of American political life since the eighteenth century, it was not until 2000 that there was a Jewish nominee for Vice President of the United States, Joe Lieberman on the Democratic party ticket. Both of these examples demonstrate that cultural norms can, and indeed, have evolved. Besides religious hostility, there is also a long tradition of antipathy to racial and ethnic groups that were not part of the original founding of the nation and its institutions. In the face of all of this the United States remains fundamentally a country of immigrants, from all around the world.
It is only recently that anti-Muslim sentiments have come to the forefront in the national consciousness. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, American public opinion was rarely even polled regarding attitudes toward Muslims. It was the destruction of the twin towers in Manhattan that enlivened, even inflamed, hostility toward Muslims, and Islam in general. The attack, far from intimidating Americans, managed to arouse what had been a peripheral, vague sentiment regarding Islam into open animosity.

When Americans were polled just before the first failed attempt to bring down the towers in 1993, they revealed less hostility than ignorance about Islam. In an overview of public opinion research on favourability toward Islam (Erik C. Nisbet, Ronald Ostman, and James Shanahan, 2009), it was revealed that when asked to give their impression of Islam, the majority (62 percent) said that they “haven’t heard enough to say” or they are “not sure.” Fourteen percent had favourable impressions and 22 percent had unfavourable impressions. When asked further, “When you think of the religion of Islam, what comes to your mind?”, the respondents gave widely disparate answers. The largest group (36 percent) indicaed either “nothing” or “not sure.” The second largest group (21 percent) evoked “Mideast” or “Arabs.” When asked if anything else comes to mind about Islam, the overwhelming majority (80 percent) failed to mention anything.

Less than a decade later, when the existence of Islam had become more prominent in the American mind, there occurred a dramatic shift in public opinion. An ABC News poll conducted soon after the attacks of 9/11 found that even though favourable opinion had increased to 47 percent, unfavourable opinion shot up to 39 percent. Thirteen percent expressed no opinion. While the majority of respondents (65 percent) declared they knew little about “the teachings and beliefs of Islam,” there was a general consensus (87 percent) that the views of the terrorists who attacked the United States did not represent “the mainstream teachings of Islam” but that of “a radical fringe.” The upswing in favourable views may be attributed to the endeavour of opinion leaders to dissociate Islam from terrorism. This was the goal of President Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech that proposed “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world based on mutual respect.” Still, ensuing surveys have found public opinion toward Muslims declined.

The American media mirrored, and no doubt also reinforced, this decline. Researchers Brigitte Nacos and Oscar Torres- Reyna coded media dispositions on Islam and Muslims before and after 9/11 and found that news media outlets reflected a notable shift away from positive, supportive, and empathetic sentiments towards Muslims, even American Muslims. Once again, this shift occurred despite efforts to dispel the idea that Islam was a violent and hateful religion, showcasing the diversity and complexity of Islam.

Interestingly though, this decline brought out a curious partisan divide, with those favourable to the Republican party exhibiting more hostility toward Muslims than declared Democrats. Gallup polls from 2007 to 2009 showed that as Americans’ self-proclaimed prejudice toward Muslims increased, so too did the likelihood of claiming the Republican Party as their political affiliation. Fifty percent of those who reported a great deal of prejudice toward Muslims said they were Republicans, compared with 17% of those who identified as Democrats. Those who reported no prejudice at all toward Muslims were more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, 39% to 23%, respectively.

In a 2017 Pew Research Center report, a majority of Republicans (63%) stated that Islam encourages violence more than other religions. Two thirds of Republicans said Islam was not part of mainstream American society while 65% said Islam and democracy were not compatible. As many as 56% of Republicans also ssaid there wa a great or fair amount of extremism among even American Muslims.

The partisan split in attitudes has been actively promoted by conservative foundations and donors. This is the conclusion of a 2011 report by the Center for American Progress entitled Fear, Inc.: the Roots of the Islamophobic Network in America. The study concluded that wealthy conservative groups were the engine behind the propagation of Islamophobia in law, private spheres, and general public sentiment. This partisan split in the views about Islam was further brought to light when, among the four Muslim Americans elected to the US House of Representatives in recent years were Democrats, two of them women.

It is important to point out that Muslims remain a very small percentage of the U.S. population, and are only a small part of the ongoing demographic changes. This is an important difference with several European countries, where Muslim immigration is a more significant source of demographic shifts. This feeds the hostile discourse of European nativists who whip up a darkly coloured fear of the “Islamification” of their societies, and question the possible integration of Muslims.

We may conclude that attitudes toward Islam in the American mind have less to do with the religion and its practitioners than it does with how current events and media reports touch upon an evolving national identity, an identity undergoing stress within the context of an increasingly multicultural and multiracial society. The polarization we see in attitudes toward Muslims reflects the broader political divisions in American society, associated with other racial, ethnic, gender, regional and cultural cleavages. It must be admitted, nevertheless, that terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam give credence in the public mind to negative attitudes toward Muslims.

As a background to all of this, it must be underlined that American society and its beliefs have always constantly evolved, even though slowly and labouriously, as is the case with all societies. So, we can find a ray of hope for the future in the Gallup poll data, which shows that those who think Muslim Americans are loyal to the country are younger than those who say Muslim Americans are not. This may very well presage a more positive and accepting view regarding Islam in the upcoming generation. But Islamic societies also have their role to play in this transformation, particularly in an interdependent world with a global media reach.

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Steven Ekovich is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at The American University of Paris.

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